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Not Just a Pretty Face: Celebrity Investors Can Add Value

Does it help to have a celebrity investor backing your start-up firm? Apart from getting you some good publicity, and of course their money, do celebrities actually bring anything more to the table?

When Edial Dekker, CEO of Berlin-based Gidsy, was raising funds for his new start-up — described as an “AirBnB for what you do at a place, not just where you sleep” — he already had on board Alex Ljung (CEO of Soundcloud) and Amen-founder Felix Petersen, both of whom count Hollywood heart-throb Ashton Kutcher as an investor. So Mr. Dekker thought: Why not?

“I sent him an email,” Mr. Dekker said, speaking at his bare office on the top floor of a block in the German capital’s Kreuzberg district.

“The next day, I think it was Friday, he called up and was like ‘guys, this is amazing. It is connecting people, this is the kind of stuff I like. I know you are very, very early, but this looks like a thing that could become really really big.’”